


les fleurs de l'enfers

by pinkgrapefruit



Series: coughing up petals [3]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 14:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkgrapefruit/pseuds/pinkgrapefruit
Summary: he asks why it smells of roses. he does not get an answer





	les fleurs de l'enfers

**Author's Note:**

> this is a hanahaki fic, the lowercase and the pronouns are a style choice, @freykitten is an awesome beta, @aftificialqtip is a babe and also gets title credits (as promised) and as usual, all characters are my own interpretation. Hit me up if you enjoy it and please send me prompts if you want some more non-branjie xx

when he first lays eyes on her, he knows he is doomed. it is like a fairytale, some sort of witchcraft as he feels his heart fall out of his chest and onto the floor, he tells himself the pounding is a symptom of excitement, it is not a symptom of  _her._

he goes over to say hello, greets each queen with a canadian smile and soft hugs. nina is the loudest and as he hugs her, warmer and harder than the rest, he asks why the room smells of roses. the look she returns is full of the deepest kind of pity, cruel to both the recipient and the purveyor. her eyes turn wet and she grips on harder, pulling him deeper into her. when she lets go, she gives him a wet smile. he hopes the rest of the competition hasn’t noticed. he does not understand her reaction.

*

he watches her undress with a sense of longing that is too new to fathom. her hair remains perfect despite the heavy wig that was stacked on top and through the glitter, layered thick over her small frame, he swears he can see a different kind of sparkle. he looks away before she can catch him staring, he does not need the world to try to understand what he himself cannot. he does not wish to share this yet. brooke fails to notice that she is watching him too.

*

his mouth tastes like sap and cigarettes. he smoked every day, trying to remove the bitter taste from his mouth but to no avail. it would always return, as reliable as morning breath and morning wood. similarly, the smell of roses clung to him, no matter how many showers he took. when he asked nina about it, four days into the competition, she told him he smelled like cedarwood and walked away.

*

he’s de-dragging after the second runway when it happens. one second he’s wiping off his eyeliner, the next his throat is raw and eyes watering frantically. when he finally opens them there is blood in the sink and a single, perfectly formed rose petal. it stares at him as he looks on in confusion. there is no explanation that he can think of, doesn’t understand why it is there or how it ended up scratching in his throat. tears threaten to fall but they don’t. later, in bed, he will struggle to remember if the petal was red, or if that was his blood.

*

its nina who he tells. he’s convinced himself that he’s insane, its the competition getting to him. that he just swallowed one of vanessa’s petals when he hugged her in that goddamn libra costume. as he thinks about her the taste gets stronger. he doesn’t notice the correlation.

nina looks at him like you would look at a child who broke their arm. her voice is soft and kind and yet the words are like punches. they are well placed in his soft flesh and suddenly his fingers are deep into his own arms, scratching till he reaches blood.

she speaks of a flower disease. hanahaki or something like that. she talks about unrequited love and time limits and then, as sweetly as she began, she asks if he knows who it is. he cannot blink back the tears that threaten to fall, just lets them pour out of him like a lifeforce, draining. he tells her that they were roses, goddamn flaming red roses. she just holds him, she understands.

*

he asks again, it’s the end of the first day of episode three and he’s collected his mind up. he’s locked away the flowers like a hoarder would with their possessions, placed them in a box marked  _‘do not open’_ _._  he hopes that he will not get any more, lest he needs a bigger one.

she tells him it passes through generations, skips some, maybe a few. says she has it too but she has not met her love. he feels like he should pray for her, he is far from religious but also knows that the taste of sap is unpleasant. he loves her enough to want to spare her from the pain. she talks about how she is worried by every new face, glad when the people she meets smell like earth and fires and grapefruit, and how she once kissed a man that smelt like  _honeysuckle._

he asks if he will die. she only says she hopes not.

*

they kiss in the workroom, it is a greeting but to brooke it feels almost like a goodbye. they smile across the room and he drinks in every second, watering the rose garden that is growing in his lungs, prays that the thorns do not puncture him before pruning season. nina said he would have years, the flowers seem to disagree.

*

they kiss in untucked as he tries frantically to calm her down. with every panicked inhale she takes, he mirrors her and he feels petals dislodge. he has to run to the bathroom at call time, coughs up a petal into the toilet and sends thanks to the lords above that his lipstick is red. nina gives him a look as he returns, barely in time. he smiles, fragile and flimsy and it tastes like blood.

*

from then on they act like a couple, hugs and tactile gestures thrown around like confetti. it feels like he’s walking on a cloud but they do not talk about it. they use words like  _‘crush’_  and ‘ _good friends’_  and it feels oh so middle school as he explains his feelings to nina. she points out that he didn’t need to do that at all, he’s still coughing up petals and he tells her that he just wants to feel normal, begs that she allows him that. they don’t talk about it again.

*

the petal amnesty lasts until vanessa’s third lipsync. he is watching from the back, cheering her on like the supportive kinda-boyfriend he is when he feels something climbing his throat. nina swears that he turned blue as he tried to suppress the gnawing urge to choke up whatever was caught. he scarcely makes it off the stage before he’s vomiting up his own blood, warm and heavy into the sink of the disabled bathroom. nina runs in after him, keeps the wig off his face as he surrenders his lungs to the white tiles. she counts three petals til he hastily turns on the tap, notes the deep red colour even as they are washed of the blood. he picks them out of the filter and wraps them in toilet paper, squeaks out a ‘ _coming_ ’ when production knocks on the door. the paper goes in the bin and she wipes a droplet of blood off his chin before they head back out. vanessa smiles at him, happy and loving and when she kisses him he prays she cannot taste the blood. if she can, she makes no mention of it.

they celebrate the top five with sex, hot and needy and when they are done he drops sweet kisses on her head, relishes in the way the room doesn’t smell of roses. he wakes up the next morning to the taste of sap on his tongue, knows that it is not over yet.

*

the night he sends her home, he watches as her eyes turn dark. as she promises him something, he tunes out, feels vines scratching at his diaphragm, whole orchards in his lungs. she is angry, and she is hurt and none of it is directed towards him but all of it is. he spends the following nights crying into one of her hoodies, sprays so much cologne on it he can almost forget that it smells like roses. like his whole goddamn world smells like a rose garden on a summers day. he can’t understand how it hurts him so much.

*

as he packs up his things, safely in the top four, he finally opens up her note. he cries as he reads it, watches the ink smudge under the weight of his tears. he picks up the pointe shoes he wore that night, notes the spots of blood on the toes and vows to get them cleaned. pointe shoes are expensive he justifies, like he can’t buy more. he doesn’t think about where the blood is from, just needs to rid himself of the evidence.

*

he coughs up a petal on the plane home, disguises it as travel sickness before burying his nose back into the worn copy of “adventures of tess of d’urbervilles”, tries to forget his own life for a second.

*

he calls his momma. when he tells her about the petals she relays folk story after folk story, family member after family member. he questions at length why she had never warned him and her answer hurts more than the roses. “i didn’t think you’d need warning” she tells him and he can hear her sorrows through the crinkly connection. he cries that night, heavy sobs wracking his body as he remembers every moment with her in his mind. a cinema of memories playing in imax and he’s the only person in the audience to watch. he remembers his mouth grasping at his straw as he watched her fight with such ferocity he promised himself to never get on the wrong side of her.

*

he checks his phone religiously, coughs up petals every few days. calls nina like she’s his mother and his mother like she’s an old friend, long forgotten. he almost forgets about her for a few months, although he smells roses as if they were planted all over tennesee.

then he gets an email. it tells them, in a group email, to play up their relationship when the show starts airing. he finds it patronising and embarrassing to be told in such a public manner, feels like it undermines what they had. if he had any guts at all he would call vanessa, tell her she means the world to him and he needs her to come back. he’d tell her about the rose garden in his chest. how it’s always in full bloom and he can’t breathe without thinking about her. how when his breath hitches, it’s the thorns scratching lines into his lungs,  scars that will always remind him of her.  _of them._

if he was an asshole, he might even tell her that this has a time limit. that it could run out if he’s not careful and that every mouthful of sap brings him nearer to his deathbed. but he is not cruel enough to be kind to himself, just kind enough to give her freedom from the flowers in his heart and his lungs and his mind.

*

one night, when he’s lonely and a week away from the cast reveal, he finally googles roses. he reads about the colour types and how to grow them. tips for first-time gardeners and how to prune them for maximum growth. he reads that red roses mean true love but wonders why his have so many thorns.

*

he sees her across the room on press day, dressed not in red, but pink. he reapplies his lipstick, he switched to red after he started choking up the petals so regularly it ruined the perfect nude he used to apply. they do not talk, sit on opposite sides of the room for no one’s benefit but their own, although, by the end of the day, he begins to doubt even that.

nina follows him around like a puppy, he jokes that she’s his emotional support animal and between interviews, she tells him she found a man that smells like sweetpeas and how grateful she is that he can smell it too. how they both cough up petal but are learning to love each other. he is so jealous and it hurts him to think about how he could have a chance at love one day.

they make eye contact across a crowded room and then the vines constrict and he throws up a whole rosebud into a trash can. he assumes the new yorkers walking past must have seen weirder things. he hopes so because he is a man in a wig throwing up flowers and attention is the last thing he needs right now.

*

watching himself fall in love on tv breaks his heart a little more. he wakes up to blood on his pillows and rose petals between his teeth. when the blood hits his bathroom tiles he thinks it looks like drag jewels, cheap and hard but beautiful. he thinks he looks like drag jewels these days.

he does viewing parties, always takes cigarette breaks in between numbers and show clips. the only lipstick he wears is a deep red that doesn’t move in the face of stomach acid and crushed dreams. people ask about them, they call it a showmance and laugh it off. they flirt on twitter like they have been told but it feels too real to brooke. he hands his account over to his best friend and tells him to be nice, he hopes vanessa doesn’t notice.

it’s slipped his mind when they started to text again but he knew as soon as it started that it wouldn’t stop. they talk constantly, like teens who cannot yet flirt but they are adults and they flirt well. conversation flows like a river between them, fuelled by tears and vodka and when they facetime for the first time he feels like a little bit of him has been returned.

*

vanessa asks him on a date. he is hesitant but he says yes. she offers up a seafood restaurant, fancy enough that neither would have afforded it pre-drag race but it is a new life that they are living, theirs to enjoy. she wears a suit jacket and he gapes at her all night, never noticing how she returns his looks. he cannot taste anything, the sap is too strong, but he assumes the food is good and moves on because he is there with her and that is all that matter to him.

*

they wake up to blood on his pillow, he cannot explain it but sees her face when she notices the roses scattered around her head like a halo. he calls nina, frantic and panicked and when she answers he gives cliff notes of the nights’ events. he pretends not to hear the man in the background who calls her babe in a voice soft like honey. he makes french toast as nina explains everything, the flowers and the death and all of the in-betweens and as she sips her coffee, thoughtfully, vanessa hums. she chimes in occasionally with little ‘ _okays’_  and  _‘_ _shittts’_  and when brooke has plated up breakfast, the look he receives is something between understanding and anger.

the toast is eaten in silence and then, when he has cleared their plates and made another round of coffee, she speaks. she asks him why he hid it and he replies in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want to worry her, scare her, unnerve her in any way. and then he adds, he didn’t know if she’d believe him and her face damn near splits in two. now she is angry and she is shouting and he just holds her because he felt all of this, months ago in a hotel room all alone and just wishes someone had done the same thing for him.

she rubs his back as he coughs up the french toast, littered with blood-red rose petals, whispers love to him as he lays on the couch, in pain and lonely despite her company.

*

it is four in the morning when she kisses him.

*

they wake up to clean pillows and as he inhales, he smells sandalwood and apple cider. he has never been so happy for his morning breath and as vanessa rolls over, he kisses her with all of the burning passion he has felt for almost a year. he melts into her with the 11 months of yearning and takes a deep breath of her shampoo when she pulls away. for once his chest does not burn when his breathing hitches, his lungs do not have the telltale feeling of thorns and rose stems, he cannot taste the sap or blood or petals and as he smiles into her head, she snuggles against his lean frame.

*

he decides he needs another tattoo, he hasn’t smelt the roses in months and he can finally look at them without his windpipe closing up from fear. nina tells him it’s a terrible idea and upon reflection that may be a part of why he is doing it but really he just wants to remember what it felt like to be so in love that you couldn’t breathe.

vanessa loves it, kisses it softly every time she can, whether in drag shows or in bed. they say that roses brought them together and so what if no one quite knows what they’re talking about -  _they do._

*

their wedding is simple and not at all vanessa-like (although very jose) but when brooke faces her at the altar, both in black suits with white shirts, her red tie is the same shade as the rose in her lapel and he begins to cry. his own lapel bears a white rose and when they kiss, the two meet in unity.

*

they name their first daughter rosie, too committed to this game they are playing to slow down anytime soon. she looks like brooke, all blonde hair, lithe and long limbs. he promises her she will be a dancer, strong and beautiful, vanessa just promises her that she will be protected from all the monsters in the world because  _she is special_. she has two dads and when brooke hears her say it for the first time, he can’t help but well up a little bit.

*

  
she is fifteen when he walks in on her sobbing in the bathroom. they have weathered every storm together and while vanessa will always be her fun dad, brooke is her shoulder to cry on. between breaths, she tells him about this girl who smells like violets and he holds her tight to his chest, lets the whole world melt away. he explains how he once met a man who smelled like roses, how it hurt him more than  _anything_  else but how now he gets to wake up to her father every morning and he remembers that roses are a blessing. he tells her that one day, violets will bring her joy and he wipes the blood off the tiles, washing white petals down the plughole, praying to each and every deity that he is right.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a sucker for hanahaki so i hope that you like this, if you have any requests/prompts please fill my inbox. Anywho, if you've got any feedback/ constructive criticism you can catch me in the comments here or over on tumblr @pink-grapefruit-cafe. I love you all and your feedback truly motivates me to keep writing xx


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